they have severely disrupted academic
> processes, the free
> function of which once made American universities
> the envy of the world
Hmm. My memory is going but seems to me that a while back during the Cold War there was such a thing as McCarthyism and blacklisting. We had a Ph.D. from Oxford and expert in Soviet agriculture teaching economics at our small university in the boondocks (Brandon University) because as a former communist party member he was blacklisted in the US.
Cheers, Ken Hanly
--- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
<http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/335667_academics17.html>
>
> Academic freedom at risk on campus
> By SAREE MAKDISI
> GUEST COLUMNIST
>
> "Academic colleagues, get used to it," warned the
> pro-Israel activist
> Martin Kramer in March 2004. "Yes, you are being
> watched. Those
> obscure articles in campus newspapers are now
> available on the
> Internet, and they will be harvested. Your syllabi,
> which you've also
> posted, will be scrutinized. Your Web sites will be
> visited late at
> night."
>
> Kramer's warning inaugurated an attack on
> intellectual freedom in the
> U.S. that has grown more aggressive in recent
> months.
>
> This attack, intended to shield Israel from
> criticism, not only
> threatens academic privileges on college campuses,
> it jeopardizes our
> capacity to evaluate our foreign policy. With a
> potentially
> catastrophic clash with Iran on the horizon and the
> Israeli-
> Palestinian conflict spiraling out of control,
> Americans urgently
> need to be able to think clearly about our
> commitments and intentions
> in the Middle East. And yet we are being prevented
> from doing so by a
> longstanding campaign of intimidation that has
> terminated careers,
> stymied debate and shut down dialogue.
>
> Over the past few years, Israel's U.S. defenders
> have stepped up
> their campaign by establishing a network of
> institutions (such as
> Campus Watch, Stand With Us, the David Project, the
> Israel on Campus
> Coalition, and the disingenuously named Scholars for
> Peace in the
> Middle East) dedicated to the task of monitoring our
> campuses and
> bringing pressure to bear on those critical of
> Israeli policies. By
> orchestrating letter-writing and petitioning
> campaigns, falsely
> raising fears of anti-Semitism, mobilizing often
> grossly distorted
> media coverage and recruiting local and national
> politicians to their
> cause, they have severely disrupted academic
> processes, the free
> function of which once made American universities
> the envy of the world.
>
> Outside interference by Israel's supporters has
> plunged one U.S.
> campus after another into crisis. They have
> introduced crudely
> political -- rather than strictly academic or
> scholarly -- criteria
> into hiring, promotion and other decisions at a
> number of
> universities, including Columbia, Yale, Wayne State,
> Barnard and
> DePaul, which recently denied tenure to the Jewish
> American scholar
> Norman Finkelstein following an especially ugly
> campaign spearheaded
> by Alan Dershowitz, one of Israel's most ardent
> American defenders.
>
> Our campuses are being poisoned by an atmosphere of
> surveillance and
> harassment. However, the disruption of academic
> freedom has grave
> implications beyond campus walls.
>
> When professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer
> drafted an essay
> critical of the effect of Israel's lobbying
> organizations on U.S.
> foreign policy, they had to publish it in the London
> Review of Books
> because their original American publisher declined
> to take it on.
> With the original article expanded into a book that
> has now been
> released, their invitation to speak at the Chicago
> Council on Global
> Affairs was retracted because of outside pressure.
> "This one is so
> hot," they were told. So although Michael Oren, an
> officer in the
> Israeli army, was recently allowed to lecture the
> council about U.S.
> policy in the Middle East, two distinguished
> American academics were
> denied the same privilege.
>
> When President Carter published "Palestine: Peace
> not Apartheid" last
> year, he was attacked for having dared to use the
> word "apartheid" to
> describe Israel's manifestly discriminatory policies
> in the West Bank.
>
> As that case made especially clear, the point of
> most of these
> attacks is to personally discredit anyone who would
> criticize Israel
> -- and to taint them with the smear of "controversy"
> -- rather than
> to engage them in a genuine debate. None of Carter's
> critics provided
> a convincing refutation of his main argument based
> on facts and
> evidence. Presumably that's because, for all the
> venom directed
> against the former president, he was right. For
> example, Israel
> maintains two different road networks, and even two
> entirely
> different legal systems, in the West Bank, one for
> Jewish settlers
> and the other for indigenous Palestinians. Those
> basic facts were
> studiously ignored by those who denounced Carter and
> angrily accused
> him of a "blood libel" against the Jewish people.
>
> That Israel's American supporters so often resort to
> angry outbursts
> rather than principled arguments -- and seem to find
> emotional
> blackmail more effective than genuine debate -- is
> ultimately a sign
> of their weakness rather than their strength. For
> all the damage it
> can do in the short term, in the long run such a
> position is
> untenable, too dependent on emotion and cliché
> rather than hard
> facts. The phenomenal success of Carter's book
> suggests that more and
> more Americans are learning to ignore the scare
> tactics that are the
> only tools available to Israel's supporters.
>
> But we need to be able to have an open debate about
> our Middle East
> policy now -- before we needlessly shed more blood
> and further erode
> our reputation among people who used to regard us as
> the champions of
> freedom, and now worry that we have come to stand
> for its very opposite.
>
> ---
>
> Saree Makdisi is a professor of English and
> Comparative Literature at
> UCLA and a frequent commentator on the Middle East.
>
>
>
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